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In spite of advances in recognising that girls and boys, and women and men, do not have to be bounded by traditional roles, gender stereotypes persist in education and beyond. Children and youth are affected by gender stereotypes from the early ages, with parental, school, teacher and peer factors influencing the way students internalise their gender identities. As such, not only is intervening in pre-primary education necessary, but also measures at the primary and secondary levels are key to eradicate gender stereotypes and promote gender equality. Based on the analytical framework developed by the OECD Strength through Diversity project, this paper provides an overview of gender stereotyping in education, with some illustrations of policies and practices in place across OECD countries, with a focus on curriculum arrangements, capacity-building strategies and school-level interventions in primary and secondary education.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) strengthens students' abilities to regulate their emotions, thoughts, and behaviours and to interact successfully with others. There are an array of important social and emotional skills (SES): goal-setting, working to one's potential, resilience, creativity, perseverance, problem solving, and caring about the welfare of others, among them. All students need SEL, but newcomer and refugee students may have particular challenges requiring SES. The beginning of this paper examines the current situation of refugee and newcomer students in OECD countries, SEL, its frameworks and skills and how they apply to newcomer and refugee students. The paper concludes with an examination of SEL policies and practices for newcomer and refugee students in OECD countries.

Education is one of the most important fields to promote the integration of refugee and newcomer children and youths in host countries. However, holistic education for refugee and newcomers has so far not been established into mainstream education systems in European countries. Projects and pilot programmes have developed across Europe to test holistic approaches. Some of them have started very recently as a response to the arrival of high numbers of refugees and newcomers, while others have been established for a longer period and have started to expand. This paper first provides an overview of key research gaps in refugee education. It then provides a mapping of promising holistic education practices in Europe, with a focus on Germany, Greece and the Netherlands. Based on this, the paper explores key conditions to upscale and institutionalise promising practices of holistic refugee and newcomer education.

Classrooms have become increasingly diverse places where students from various backgrounds share their learning experiences. To promote inclusive school settings for all, building teacher capacity for inclusive teaching represents a key policy area. Education systems need to ensure that teachers are adequately prepared for inclusive teaching and supported throughout their career. Mechanisms to attract and retain a more diverse teaching body as well as to monitor and evaluate teacher preparation and work with respect to diversity and inclusion should also be developed. While teacher policies have increasingly addressed some of these areas, most education systems lack comprehensive capacity-building frameworks for inclusive teaching. This paper maps policies and practices to build teacher capacity for inclusive teaching across OECD countries. It then presents core elements and competences to design and implement inclusive teaching strategies. Finally, the paper reviews some of the evidence available on teacher diversity and interventions for inclusive teaching.

The number of countries that regularly participate in international large-scale assessments has increased sharply over the past 15 years, with the share of countries participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment growing from one-fifth of countries in 2000 to over one-third of countries in 2015. What accounts for this increase? This paper explores the evidence for three broad explanations: globalization of assessments, increasing technical capacity for conducting assessments, and increased demand for the microeconomic and macroeconomic data from these assessments. Data were compiled from more than 200 countries for this analysis, for six time periods between 2000 and 2015, yielding more than 1,200 observations. The data cover each country's participation in each of six cycles of PISA as it relates to the country's level of economic development, region, prior experience with assessment, and OECD membership. The results indicate that the odds of participation in PISA are markedly higher for OECD member countries, countries in the Europe and Central Asia region, high- and upper-middle-income countries, and countries with previous national and international assessment experience; the paper also finds that regional assessment experience is unrelated to PISA participation.

This working paper identifies OECD countries' interests in digital innovation in education by analysing their policy papers on digital education. Many OECD countries have adopted a specific strategy on digital education, or integrated the topic in a generic strategy on digital innovation as such. The ideas that are expressed in the strategies differ greatly; some are work in progress, others contain bold envisions of the future. There is a high awareness among OECD countries of the benefits of digitalisation, and the role of government to support digital innovation in education. This paper covers and documents countries' policy focus before the 2020 coronavirus crisis.

The global spread of COVID-19 has led to unprecedented disruptions in schooling around the world that have animated increased interest among policymakers, educators, researchers and the general public in knowing about how education systems have responded to the pandemic and how students' learning experiences have changed. The PISA Global Crises Module was developed to address this need. 62 student questionnaire items (grouped into 11 questions) and 68 school questionnaire items (grouped into 14 questions) were developed following a process that involved input from leading questionnaire development experts, PISA National Centres, as well as small-scale cognitive interview studies in three countries. While all countries were affected by the pandemic in some way, the module seeks to illuminate differential effects on student learning and well-being, and the degree of interruption or changes to education across different education systems. Governing bodies, organisations and researchers can use the instruments and the descriptions of the underlying constructs for adaptation and broader implementation.

Despite the international commitment to Roma social inclusion from 2005 onwards, the overall situation has not significantly changed. In education, important achievements have been reached, mainly in terms of access to primary. Yet, Roma students still lag behind. This paper maps policy initiatives for Roma inclusion in European education systems, analyses remaining challenges and explores policy perspectives. It first describes European countries' conceptualisation and categorisation of ethnic groups. In doing so, it differentiates colour-blind countries that prohibit diversity data and prioritise integrated approaches in policymaking, and countries that collect such data and use targeted approaches. This work then identifies initiatives aimed at improving Roma students' inclusion and recurrent challenges, such as segregation in education and anti-Gypsyism. The few evaluations available indicate that best practices are those that (1) combine mainstream and targeted approaches; (2) are community-based, with a genuine participation of Roma; (3) are conscious of cultural disparities; and (4) adopt an intercultural approach.

A substantial amount of money is spent on technology by schools, families and policymakers with the hope of improving educational outcomes. This paper explores the theoretical and empirical literature on the impacts of technology on educational outcomes. The literature focuses on two primary contexts in which technology may be used for educational purposes: i) classroom use in schools, and ii) home use by students. Theoretically, ICT investment and CAI use by schools and the use of computers at home have ambiguous implications for educational achievement: expenditures devoted to technology necessarily offset inputs that may be more or less efficient, and time allocated to using technology may displace traditional classroom instruction and educational activities at home. However, much of the evidence in the schooling literature is based on interventions that provide supplemental funding for technology or additional class time, and thus favor finding positive effects. Nonetheless, studies of ICT and CAI in schools produce mixed evidence with a pattern of null results. Notable exceptions to this pattern occur in studies of developing countries and CAI interventions that target math rather than language. In the context of home use, early studies based on multivariate and instrumental variables approaches tend to find large positive (and in a few cases negative) effects while recent studies based on randomized control experiments tend to find small or null effects. Early research focused on developed countries while more recently several experiments have been conducted in developing countries.

This publication contains critical analyses of filmstrips dealing with five major world areas: Russia and East Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Near East. The filmstrips are for use in elementary and secondary classrooms. One hundred and fifty filmstrips produced between 1970 and the present and available from commercial publishers and distributors were chosen for inclusion. Each filmstrip was reviewed by at least two persons, one with expertise in the content area and one with expertise in curriculum and instruction. The evaluations are organized by area under study and by grade level within each area. Bibliographical data provided for each entry includes title of filmstrip, publisher, publication date, grade level, and filmstrip components. The evaluation contains a description of the filmstrip's subject matter and major themes, a critical evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the filmstrip, and a discussion of the Teacher's Guide. The evaluation instrument utilized is included. This publication is the second stage of the Multicultural Education Project of the UCLA Curriculum Inquiry Center which was established to further multicultural studies in the K-12 area. In the first stage of the project, center staff developed annotated bibliographies of print and nonprint learning materials dealing with the five major world areas. (Author/RM)

COVID-19 has caused considerable disruption to education around the world. Disadvantaged and marginalised learners are being particularly hard hit. Naturally, throughout the pandemic, the focus of much attention has been on how to open schools safely with a preoccupation with the hygiene and social distancing considerations. A shift is noticeable and welcome. With schools in many jurisdictions reopening partially or fully there is a growing interest in the immensely important area of recovering the lost learning that has occurred while learners have been away from face-to-face education. This report documents an analysis of policy and grey literature. It is one output from the first phase of our collaboration and links are made to two other outputs: (1) A rapid evidence assessment (REA) of the academic literature; and (2) An overarching summary paper drawing out key messages and introducing the next phase of the collaboration. [This report is written with assistance from Anna Riggall, Ella Page, Elnaz Kashefpakdel and Sonia Guerriero. For the companion report, "Learning Loss, Learning Gains and Wellbeing: A Rapid Evidence Assessment," see ED615066.]

Education systems in under-resourced environments face several challenges, some of them exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. A possible way to address some of the challenges is to apply information and communication technologies. However, effectively integrating technology into education systems is a complex task. In this paper, factors contributing to successful integration of technology in education are explored, with a focus on under-resourced contexts. Case studies of successful technology implementation in education systems are discussed and analyzed to identify the factors that drive success. The analysis is framed using the reform strategy offered by The World Development Report 2018 ("Learning to Realize Education's Promise"). This is expected to provide policymakers and practitioners a way to align their education technology initiatives and strategies with the larger education reform agenda. Key lessons identified from the analysis are as follows. First, it is necessary to articulate "what" precisely does the technology intervention change/enable. Second, it is important to better understand the context to develop technologies and implementation strategies that fit the operating context. Third, it is essential to regularly monitor and evaluate programs and to feed that information into continuously improving design and implementation. Fourth, through the entire cycle of technology implementation, stakeholders must be consulted, understood, and empowered. However small the intervention, realizing the potential of technology tools in education requires keeping in mind the big picture offered by these lessons. [For "Learning to Realize Education's Promise. World Development Report, 2018," see ED604389.]

This paper relates the experiences of the United States and selected Eastern European and Asian countries in incorporating multiculturalism into their educational systems. It begins by discussing political and social roots of the multicultural experience. It continues by examining multilinguistic education, including the development and use of indigenous languages. The paper then states that the educational inclusiveness of European countries in which there are two strong ethnic groups differs from the approach in the United States. The paper concludes that at this educational juncture, the United States can learn from European and Asian countries by observing how former "minority" cultures are incorporated, by observing how sensitivity is needed for the expectations of those entering a new culture, and by asking what priority should be put on multiple language learning. (EF)

Education is recognized to be a key factor of economic development, not only giving access to technological progress as emphasized by the Schumpeterian growth theory, but also entailing numerous social externalities such as the demographic transition (Murtin, 2009) or democratization (Murtin and Wacziarg, 2010). If the evolution of world distributions of income and longevity over the last two centuries have been described by Bourguignon and Morrisson (2002), changes in the world distribution of education have remained unexplored until now, despite their major importance. How has global education inequality evolved over the twentieth century? How should it be measured? Up to now, existing studies on education inequality have had limited spatial and time coverage. For example, Castello and Domenech (2002) and Thomas et al. (2001) provide a descriptive analysis of years of schooling inequality for a broad panel of countries, but their study starts only in 1960. Also, they remain at the country level and do not consider the world distribution of years of schooling, which takes into account educational differences both within and between countries. In contrast, this paper depicts the world distribution of education over 140 years, improving and extending the database recently released by Morrisson and Murtin (2009), which focuses on average years of schooling. The authors provide both average years of schooling and the distribution of education as summarised up by four quantiles in each country. Importantly, this new database is cross-validated by historical data on illiteracy rates. Then, they describe average stocks of primary, secondary and tertiary schooling by region since 1870, and estimate world inequality in years of schooling, which has been dramatically reduced since 1870. Focusing on the measurement of education inequality, this paper raises an important methodological issue. The authors show that a substantial share of inequality in years of schooling can be mechanically explained by a single component of the distribution of education, namely the population that has not attended school, subsequently called the illiterate population. Actually, they find that the observed decrease in inequality in years of schooling over the XXth century is almost entirely explained by the decline in illiteracy. They believe that this result, derived both theoretically and empirically, could help to reconsider an empirical fact discussed in the literature on education inequality (see Berthelemy (2006)), namely the cross-country negative correlation between the average of and the inequality in years of schooling. This correlation mainly reflects the negative and mechanical correlation between average schooling and the illiteracy rate. In line with a recent macroeconomic literature (see for instance Hall and Jones (1999)), the authors then turn to human capital as defined by Mincer (1974), in order to confer a monetary dimension to education. They propose estimates of the world inequality in human capital, examining several definitions for human capital. They focus on one functional form in particular, which accounts for the existence of diminishing returns to schooling. It is the only one that can account for the cross-country negative correlation between Mincer returns to schooling and average years of schooling, as described by Psacharopoulos and Patrinos (2004). At the national level, they find that that human capital inequality within countries has increased then stabilized or even decreased in most regions of the world. When plotted against average years of schooling, human capital inequality within countries has clearly followed an inverted U-shape curve, namely a "Kuznets curve of education". At the global level, they also find that human capital inequality has increased from 1870 to approximatively 1970, then has decreased. They interpret these findings as a consequence of mass education and the existence of diminishing returns to schooling. (Contains 6 tables, 6 figures and 14 footnotes.)

This paper presents salient points of a comprehensive project on the educational problems of southern European migrant workers' children in schools in Germany. These selected findings concern the origins of the migrants, the selectiveness of the migration process, and the school situation of the children of the migrants and of those migrants who return home. Section 1, an introduction, describes the historical backdrop from the labor migration and the broad basis for the primary study. Section 2 outlines study methods and describes the samples. Section 3 presents the results in the following categories: (1) origins and characteristics of migrant workers and school situation of their children in the host country; (2) mother-tongue teaching, nationality based classes, and schools in the host country; (3) educational situation after return to country of origin; and (4) special educational treatments for return migrants' children in the country of origin. Section 4 presents conclusions noting that migrant children have serious problems at school during the migratory period, that they are at a disadvantage after returning home to the country of origin, and that unless they return to their country when they are 9 years old at the latest, they have little chance of succeeding at school. Included are 11 figures and 20 references. (JB)

The question of the relationship between capitalism and democracy is not new; scholars have produced a rich literature about it that includes virtually every considerable point of view. Yet the question is of more than historical interest; with the recent dramatic political and economic upheavals in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, it becomes again a question of great moment. The purpose of this paper is three-fold: first, to summarize briefly the more important, current thinking of U.S. scholars about the capitalism/democracy connection; second, to call attention to the specific economic values and fundamental assumptions about economic activity that underlie U.S. constitutionalism and reinforce democratic norms; and, finally, to consider the implication of the foregoing for the education of citizens in a market-oriented, democractic society. (DB)

Trends of educational change in (formerly) East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria are examined as restructuring takes place during the establishment of democratic political processes. These trends are culled from over 50 onsite semistructured interviews in August 1990, as part of a longitudinal study to document educational reform in this region. The theoretical framework, definitions, and methodology of the study precede the discussion of patterns of change of restructuring efforts that fall into five broad themes. They are decentralizing of educational administration; democratization within the schools; pluralism in school reform; curricular reform; and increased choice for local educational stakeholders such as teachers, students, and parents. Six challenges are considered most pertinent to educational restructuring. They are bureaucratic inertia, resource and planning requirements, retraining/training teachers for new pedagogy and content, the search for a new national identity, building on previous educational reform, and trust in the government. The paper concludes with reflections on change patterns. (RR)

This paper takes stock of the state of language learning in the UK, as the country teeters on the edge of Brexit and becomes used to being led by the first Prime Minister in over 50 years to have studied Languages at university. The author, Megan Bowler, a Classics student at the University of Oxford, looks at the broad benefits to individuals, society and the economy of learning languages. She also shows the UK has sunk far below other European countries in the proportion of young people who are familiar with another language, and she explains how this is now hitting university Languages Departments. Packed with case studies and based on a wide range of source materials, the report ends with a list of recommendations for policymakers and educational institutions throughout the UK, including: making Language courses more interesting to study; reintroducing compulsory Languages at GCSE (where this does not already exist); and ensuring migration rules encourage the supply of those who can teach Languages.

This paper describes social and political education in the Netherlands ("maatschappijleer") since the introduction of the subject in 1968. Points discussed include historical developments, the national curriculum project for "maatschappijleer," goals and content, government educational policy, and the position of East-West relations in the curriculum. Political decisions recently taken in the Netherlands are crucial to the future development of the content and structure of education. This also is true for political education. In other European countries such as England and Scotland, there is a tendency in educational policy towards core curricula, national criteria, grade related criteria, and nationwide tests. This paper concludes with thoughts on the position and significance of East-West relations in the curriculum and suggestions for more international cooperation and coordination. (Author)

Like many other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, children in Slovakia are allocated to different types of schools at an early age based upon their perceived aptitude. Part of the selection process includes an attempt to identify those children who are particularly academic-oriented. Primary and secondary education in Slovakia is divided into two separate phases: lower and upper, which are also reflected by educational levels two and three, set by the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED). Primary and lower secondary schools represent the compulsory phase of the educational path and the institutional structure through which all children pass. The upper secondary schools belong to the post-compulsory phase of school attendance for young people who want to enter the labour market or continue their studies. Primary or basic school ("zakladna skola") takes 9 years to complete, and provides primary education (Grades 1-4) and lower secondary education (Grades 5-9). At the end of Grade 9 students are streamed into several types of upper secondary school. There are two branches of upper secondary schools in Slovakia: grammar school or high school ("gymnazium"), and various vocational schools ("stredna odborna skola," "stredna odborna uciliste," "zdruzena stredna skola"). In this paper, the authors' focus is primarily on the selection of students into "gymnazium" schools prior to grade 9, and in the transition from grade 9 to grade 10, and in the differences in results and access to resources in the two sectors. Although in the second stage of selection students are also selected into two types of "non-gymnazium" secondary schools, they are primarily concerned with the differences between "gymnazium" and "non-gymnazium" schools. In April 2003, 15-year old students from 281 schools in Slovakia took part in the 2nd cycle of the OECD PISA study. This paper aims to examine the data from the enhanced sample of the PISA 2003 study to: (1) examine the extent to which early and late selection are related to family socio-economic status and gender; and (2) determine the extent of inequalities in mathematics achievement among students in the two types of schools, before and after controlling for students' socio-economic backgrounds and the SES composition of the school. (Contains 3 figures and 3 tables.)

The expansion of compulsory schooling after the Second World War represented an important reform common to the majority of European countries. Specifically, over the period 1950-2000, the fifteen Western European countries considered in this study have extended the school-leaving age by one year or longer. Interestingly, this change in legislation was undertaken by Nordic, Anglo-Saxon and Continental countries, which had different traditions and experiences in educational policy. Many theories have been proposed in the sociology and political science literature to explain the expansion of education during this "period of extensive development of the educational and training system" (Diebolt (1999), p.30). But these country-level studies are too specific to allow any inference on the common factors that may have influenced education policies in a similar way. What is missing in the literature is a comparative analysis of the educational reforms undertaken at the European level. Comparative works by Diebolt and Fontevielle (2001) and Ringer (1979) represent an attractive start but are not sufficient to exhibit the factors driving the expansion of compulsory schooling in general. Nor do they explain the timing and the magnitude of changes in compulsory years of schooling that occurred in most European countries after the war. In contrast, this paper adopts a comparative approach using an original data set for fifteen European countries over the period 1950-2000, and undertakes a quantitative analysis of the determinants of changes in compulsory schooling laws. The major phenomenom the authors observe in the data is convergence: the lower mandatory schooling in 1950, the sooner and the larger the change in the legal age of compulsory schooling. The authors argue that economic forces promote convergence of educational systems for two simple reasons: first, the profitability of education is decreasing at the margin, second, extending compulsory schooling has an increasing marginal cost because years of Secondary are more expensive than years of Primary. In other words, compulsory schooling has decreasing net aggregate returns that trigger convergence. Next, the authors test whether convergence still holds when one controls for other determinants described in the literature. Some theories have emphasized respectively the effects of trade and technological progress, institutional aspects, and constraints set on a benevolent State. They do find conditional convergence as well as evidence supporting some aspects of these theories taken individually. However, the most robust secondary effect is openness: the more open a country, the higher compulsory years of schooling. Rising globalization and public investments into education therefore appear to be complementary phenomenoms in the postwar Western Europe. Appended are: (1) Variables; (2) Tables; and (3) Figures. (Contains 5 tables, 3 figures and 22 footnotes.)

The importance of restructuring the discipline of geography and enhancing its role in the precollege curriculum as part of a global approach to education is emphasized in this paper. International education is seen as an essential part of high school and college education in an increasingly interdependent world. The oil crisis, the world economic recession, and the Iranian hostage crisis have made the U.S. public aware of the complex world situation and have increased the need to understand the complexities of global interdependence. A revitalization of regional geography or area studies with a global emphasis and a problems approach is suggested. In order to show how geography developed as a discipline and illustrate its placement in the curriculum of the United States and Europe, its history is traced from the eighteenth century to the present. Traditionally, geography has held a higher status in the curriculum in Europe than in the United States. By the time a global perspective was introduced into the United States curriculum, theoretical goegraphy prevailed at the university level, and geography was never introduced as a required and integral part of high school education as it was in Europe. (SM)

Three research questions are addressed in this paper: (1) What does school improvement mean in relation to the context of a research project? (2) Given particular developments in European society and the nature of primary research data, what should schools be like in the year 2001? (3) What steps are being taken in research and development to answer these questions? Because such fundamental questions have no easy answers, this discussion is limited to reflections based on educational research and development experiences in various Western European countries. Section 2 of the report analyzes characteristics of large-scale innovation projects in education. The context of school improvement is discussed, and the meaning of school improvement is interpreted. To provide an illustration to the second research question, the report's third section explores specific tasks facing schools in 2001 by referring to Belgium's comprehensive Renewed Primary School project. The processes involved in study of the large-scale innovation project are deliberated. The final section focuses on research and development questions that should be considered in the next decade. Methodological approaches to emerging complex research issues include design of long-term follow-up studies and use of multiple data sources. Twenty references conclude the report. (CJH)

This paper is one in a series of reports based upon data from the "Social Challenges of Transition (SCT)" database. This cross-country study examines empirical trends in access to and financing of education in nine Central and East European countries. The study substantially improves the understanding of the impact of transition on education systems, yet lack of comparable data limits the ability to address critical issues, including educational outcomes and qualitative changes in teaching methods and curricula. The paper investigates the impact of transition on education by identifying emerging empirical trends in access, financing, and delivery of education in the countries of Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, FYR Macedonia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Section 1 examines changes in access to education, as measured by trends in enrollments across education levels. Section 2 discusses the links between labor market developments and the education sector, highlighting the impact of structural shifts in employment on education. Section 3 discusses financing of education, describing changing financing mechanisms and trends in expenditures. Section 4 analyzes the changing situation for teachers in the region. Section 5 summarizes main findings and proposes directions for further research. (EH)